Let Me Eat Cake
- Dec 12, 2016
- 6 min read
Dear Friends,
I've had a wicked craving for chocolate cake lately. And I mean the really good kind. The kind that's so deeply, darkly, meltingly chocolatey that it makes you feel a little guilty as you take a giant bite. Sadly, there has been little time in my schedule for baking up such indulgences, thus the plaintive title of this blog post. I'm sorry that so much time has drifted by since my last post, but it feels good to be back!
In the past few months, the rough waters of the earlier part of this year seemed to settle down a little. I've continued to work at the hospital and gone on a few trips, even managing to take my first real vacation in a long time. I've also squeezed in a few cherished baking days, which I've been meaning to post about for months. Of course now it's almost Christmas, so these cake photos seem a little out of season, but better to share them late than never, right? We'll start with a romantic little cake I made for a baby shower some months ago.
This bright and tangy lemon cake was filled with layers of blueberries, lemon curd, and blueberry swiss meringue buttercream, then dressed in buttercream ruffles and topped with a buttercream rose, lavender macarons, and fresh baby's breath.
I chose blueberry for the frosting flavor because the baby shower color scheme was lavender, and as I've mentioned before, I like to minimize my use of food coloring when possible. So almost all the color in the frosting is from the blueberry paste I made from freeze-dried blueberries and whole milk. And of course, lemon was a classic choice to partner with the blueberry!
In the spirit of full disclosure, the macarons were store-bought! Making those delicate, crispy, chewy confections is a challenge that I haven't yet taken on. By the way, I've tried the world's most famous macarons, at the luxurious pastry shop/restaurant Ladurée in Paris. And I gotta say, I didn't feel that they were any better than the ones I've had at 'Lette in Los Angeles. Perhaps my experience was tainted because the macarons were given to us by the management to temper my hangry displeasure at waiting over an hour for an omelette. Not only was the long-awaited omelette the most rubbery, sad thing ever, but we were also targeted by a gang of pick-pocketers as we left! It was a memorable experience, to say the least.
The cake was super-moist with a light, fluffy texture, and the fresh zing of lemon paired wonderfully with the soft, silky buttercream. The ladies at the baby shower seemed to enjoy it, and even helped set up mini baby rattles around the plate for the photo above! :)
Another cake I was excited to make in the past few months was for my brother's birthday. Making anything in the kitchen for my brother is never a task to be taken lightly, as he's the picky one in our family! So I thought long and hard about some of his favorite flavors, and came up with this:
This cake was a celebration of two of my brother's favorite desserts, Oreo cake and banana cream pie. At the base was a rich, decadent banana cream pie with graham cracker crust, topped with layers of moist dark chocolate cake and creamy Oreo ermine frosting. The entire pie-cake was then coated with chocolate ganache, drenched with a super-glossy chocolate mirror glaze, and decorated with chocolate-dipped banana chips and Oreo "rocks." I was going for a slightly more modern and masculine aesthetic with this one; what do you think?
This is just a close-up to demonstrate how shiny that mirror glaze was. Those banana chips can see their reflections in the glaze below! It was my first time making a mirror glaze, so it was fun watching the reflective surface develop as the glaze cooled.
Here you can see the flavor adventures going on underneath that smooth surface. This was my first time baking a graham cracker crust to go inside a cake and I was worried about it being too soft, so I ended up making it too hard! We all had fun chipping away at the crust to get bites of it (facepalm!). But omg...that banana cream filling. I made a dense, rich, banana-studded vanilla custard and then lightened it up by gently whisking in freshly whipped cream. The result was blissfully redolent of sweet bananas and vanilla, with a creamy melt-in-your-mouth texture. The deeply chocolatey cake layers and fluffy Oreo frosting were also lovely, but for me, the banana cream filling was clearly the star.
Next on my little review of recent cakes is the delicate pink cupcake pictured above. For a friend's surprise engagement party, I whipped up a batch of these vanilla cupcakes with raspberry swiss meringue buttercream, sprinkled with tiny gold hearts and sugar pearls, and dressed in gilded wrappers.
I apologize for the poorly lit photo above, but this gives you an idea of what the display looked like at the party. The pink and gold colors and delicate flavors went well with the romantic, sentimental mood of the evening. And by the way, she said yes!
Last, but not least, I'd like to share the most recent cake I made, just the other day. Now unlike some of the cakes above, this one looks more up-to-date for the season!
For a church Christmas party, I was asked to make a coconut birthday cake for one of the hosts, whose birthday is on Christmas. I've always had a soft spot for those whose birthdays fall on Christmas. I guess if you have to share your birthday with anyone, it's an honor to share it with Jesus, but still! To have people give you only one combination birthday/Christmas gift per year is tough stuff! So I considered this cake to be my early birthday gift to this particular Christmas baby and his lovely wife.
The birthday boy's "most favorite" cake flavor is coconut, so the cake layers and swiss meringue buttercream were permeated with creamy coconut milk and fragrant coconut emulsion. Then I slathered in layers of tart, silky homemade raspberry curd to complement and cut through the richness of the coconut. The outer coat of snowy coconut flakes, ripe red raspberries, and bright green mint declared this to be a Christmas coconut cake. I was so busy serving slices that I forgot to take photos of the inside until the cake was almost completely demolished. I only have this blurry snap of a half-eaten slice, but it gives you an idea of the soft, tender texture and the flavors inside (there were originally three layers!)
This has already been a lengthy catch-up blog post since I hadn't posted in such a long time. So if you came mostly for the cake, feel free to stop reading here. The rest of the post will just be various photos from the past few months, as I was practicing how to use the camera my husband got me. I'm sharing these photos here because I think this blog is becoming somewhat of an online journal for me. I want to be able to look back on this post and see what else I was up to during my long hiatus from posting.
The photo above was taken at the engagement party I mentioned earlier. It may not seem that impressive until you realize that those flowers were sitting in a dark room. My new camera takes nice low-light pictures!
This is a photo of a staircase that descends to the Malibu tide pools. We had a beautiful afternoon there.
My husband walking along the Malibu tide pools, searching for treasure.
A starfish in a tide pool, waving its arms in response to a piece of kelp that floated onto it.
Another view of the cool rusty staircase at the tide pools.
An old rusted engine that we found on the beach, kind of lovely in its own imperfect way.
The first sunrise during our vacation in Oahu. That vacation was long overdue, and the sunrise seemed to promise better and brighter days ahead.
Local Hawaiian flowers that my husband secretly had delivered to our room for our anniversary.
The most delicious thing we ate in Oahu: ahi musubis encrusted with toasted sesame seeds. Just looking at this photo makes me drool.
Loving these giant sleigh bells on our door. Their merry jingling makes me feel festive whenever I open our door!
Thanks for staying with me through this super-long post. I didn't have time to nicely type up any recipes this time, but feel free to leave me a comment if there's a recipe you want, and I'd be happy to send it to you. I'll try to post more frequently so that I don't have a million photos to share each time in order to catch you up on what I've been doing! I'm blessed to have friends out there who care to read this blog, and I wish you all a magical and joyful Christmas season.
Thank you for sharing the sweet life with me.
Blessings,
Michelle ^_^
Comments